Inside Out

Natalie Hibberd

Description

In a divisive world of mistrust and murder, there's only one thing that matters growing up: you're either in The Inside or The Outside.While the Insiders appear pampered and privileged, the Outsiders know only harsh realities. Believing themselves to beneedlessly deprived of everything the Insiders have, the younger generation channel their rage into a terrorist group calledThe Freedom Fighters, a group intent on overthrowing the Inside at any cost. Now the Insiders must watch as the world theylove collapses around them while the government resort to increasingly desperate tactics to try and contain the Outsidethreat. When the latest initiative catapults one of the young into the heart of the war, everything is pushed to breakingpoint.Loyalties will be tested. Lives will be risked. Their worlds will change forever.

Sujets

• Children's

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 13 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838599874
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2019 Natalie Hibberd

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.


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ISBN 9781838599874

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

For Mum, who heard my stories first,
and for Dad, who saved this one from the
jaws of certain death.

This book is also dedicated to the
memory of Joan Harcourt
(1st December 1927 – 26th March 2012)
Contents
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
twenty-four
twenty-five
twenty-six
twenty-seven
twenty-eight
twenty-nine
thirty
thirty-one
thirty-two
thirty-three
thirty-four
thirty-five
thirty-six
thirty-seven
thirty-eight
thirty-nine
forty
Acknowledgements
one
Zack McGregor stifled a yawn of exhaustion and sat back in his chair. Why was life so complicated nowadays? Rain was bucketing down, launching a vicious onslaught upon the windows and adding considerably to the intensity of his headache. He let out a moan of protest and half-closed his eyes; he was so tired!
Zack, though only sixteen, had been employed for a long time as major-domo and clerk to Samuel Brand – the prime minister of The Inside. A flash of lightning illuminated the stuffy box room Zack called his office and the half-finished speech he was writing for Samuel, which was lying on the oaken desk. He sighed heavily, picked it up and reread what he’d written:

The so-called Freedom Fighters [the FF] shall not prevail; they are nothing but cowards who feel that violence is the way to achieve what they want: control and ownership of The Inside. We will ensure that this does not happen.
Despite the constant threats we have received, we have not given in to the outrageous demands of an organisation that is so hell bent on destroying the time of peace and prosperity we have all worked so hard to achieve.

He screwed the paper into a ball, sighed again, then tossed it over his shoulder into the metal waste paper bin in the corner. It was no good; it just wasn’t right. For one thing, the Freedom Fighters’ ‘outrageous demands’ had resulted in the receipt of substantial sums of ransom money on more than one occasion, with the most recent payout being just last week. The terrorist group had threatened to plant a bomb in the Golden Crown Shopping Centre at the height of the midday rush. This would have killed hundreds of people. For another thing, it felt insulting to the population to suggest that the group tearing apart everything they held most dear were ‘nothing but cowards’ since everybody knew that they were much more and, as a result, much more terrible than that.
Distantly, he heard the grandfather clock downstairs chime midnight. Zack stood up and walked over to the rain-streaked window, resolving to finish the speech later.
Before him, he saw the entire scope of The Inside, which was bathed in the bright, yellow glare of the moving security lights all around the building. He observed the rolling green hills; clear, blue pools; and, most prominent of all, the soft, golden sands.
His eyes travelled slowly across the landscape and came to rest on a looming, dark shape that ran along the horizon. A shiver of ice-cold blood ran down Zack’s spine. It was The Outside. The barren and desolate place where the Freedom Fighters were based, as well as many of their unruly supporters. He bit his lip; things were looking bad enough already without the fact that the FF were heavily recruiting – so much so that their agents were now spilling over the border. He shuddered at the thought. The enemies’ filtration was like a giant oil spill, spreading a dark shadow across the world and devouring everything in its path. It showed no mercy.
As he gazed out of the window at the hulking silhouette of enemy territory, it suddenly hit Zack just how much of a mess The Inside government were in and just how long, very like an oil spill, it would take to clear up.
two
‘Morning!’ Zack greeted the Brand family as brightly as possible as he opened the door and stepped over the threshold into their state-of-the-art kitchen diner. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘Hello, Zack,’ smiled Rosa, Samuel’s stunningly beautiful wife, who was sitting at the head of the large, mahogany kitchen table.
‘Hi,’ grinned Lucy, who was the family’s only daughter and one of Zack’s closest friends. ‘All right?’
‘Barely,’ her friend replied wearily. He held out the freshly completed speech, now tied in a tight scroll, to Samuel. ‘Here you are, sir.’
‘Thank you,’ answered the older man. He took the paper, looking relieved, and set it down on the marble worktop.
‘When are you due on the TV?’ Lucy asked her father curiously.
He looked apprehensive. ‘Eleven.’
‘We’ll be watching!’ she told him cheerfully, attempting to stop him feeling nervous. ‘Won’t we, Zack?’
‘Yep!’ Zack replied, adding grimly to himself, along with the rest of the population, who’ll probably be throwing everything within reach at the screen . Clearing his throat, he announced that he had work to do. ‘See you later’ he told Lucy and then he left, gloomily anticipating the day ahead.
***
‘Mr Brand, will you tell us exactly how you plan to deal with the current crisis?’ asked the interviewer.
Lucy bit her lip as she watched her father being grilled for information by Rory Miller, the news presenter interviewing him. Since the press conference given that morning, which had concluded in the reading of Zack’s speech, it seemed as though Rory had been asking the same question over and over again for the past half an hour, just rephrasing it every so often: ‘How is this situation being rectified?’ or ‘how are the current political exertions being dealt with?’
To make matters worse, Michael Chester, Samuel’s most vocal political adversary, had also been invited to the consultation, and things were getting undeniably ugly.
Chester had now cut across Lucy’s dad’s stammered reply, declaring with obvious zest that not enough was being done by the current government to remedy the catastrophe, and that if it was beyond their abilities, then perhaps a new party needed to take control. With that, Chester flashed his movie star grin at the camera, his shockingly white teeth glistening menacingly.
Sitting next to Lucy on the sofa, Zack cursed under his breath, an outraged expression on his face.
On the screen, Miller was trying and failing to keep the peace, as the two politicians’ argument became still more intense.
‘…I am merely pointing out that if the government cannot handle the situation—’ sneered Chester.
‘With all due respect, Mr Chester, my government are making a vast amount of progress —’ countered Brand.
‘I’m afraid that your idea of “a vast amount of progress” is very different to mine!’
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, please!’ Rory was becoming more and more flustered. ‘Be civil!’
Samuel and Michael, who had both made an aggressive movement towards each other, sank back into their chairs.
Miller sighed with relief. ‘Well, then, shall we go on?’
***
The rest of the interview passed without any more major disagreements, but it was clear to everyone watching that both men hugely disliked each other. It was therefore no surprise to see that, when the discussion finally drew to a close, the re was a look of great relief on Rory Miller’s face.
With a sigh, Lucy grabbed the remote and switched off the television set. ‘Thank God that’s over!’ she declared.
‘Hey!’ Rosa scolded, ‘don’t let your dad hear you saying stuff like that when he gets home; he’ll be a nervous wreck already!’ She sounded firm, but there was barely concealed agreement visible in her eyes.
three
‘Honestly, Liam!’ exclaimed Sherona Hamilton, glaring at her best friend, ‘d’you ever stop talking about your stupid guitar? It’s getting really annoying!’
‘My guitar is my baby!’ replied Liam passionately. ‘You’ve just never had feelings like mine.’
‘Yep, it’s official; you’ve finally gone totally insane!’ cried Bliss Cookson, another member of the group. ‘It’s a flashy hunk of wood, that’s all; not a flamin’ person.’
Liam was incandescent with rage. ‘ How dare you? ’ he fumed.
The others burst out laughing at his expression.
‘Will you please keep it down?’ implored Nerrisia Simons, her dark eyes heavily shadowed. ‘I’ve got a splitting headache. The baby was crying all night.’
‘I can’t imagine having a baby br